Things had gotten so bad for Susan, a woman who cannot throw anything out, that she was afraid to open her closet door.

There was a lot of stuff inside. Stuff in boxes and bags, cartons and crates. Were Susan to open the closet door, there was a pretty good chance the stuff - about 30 containers' worth - would fall out and hit her on the head.

So she did the prudent thing instead, and hired a consultant. There are consultants for most things these days, including for being afraid to open your closet door. There are also consultants for people who have too much stuff piled up in their guest bedroom - in Susan's case, 17 boxes' worth.

Such consultants are called professional organizers. The one Susan summoned to her Noe Valley home is one of the best in the business. Her name is Connie Johnson and she charges $250 per visit, which is big money only to the small-minded. It constitutes a real bargain to anyone who stands to get an entire closet and bedroom back from the dead.

To watch Johnson at work is to gain a deep understanding into the souls of people with 30 containers of stuff in their closets and 17 boxes in their spare bedrooms. The two women climbed the stairs to the third floor of Susan's house. The stairs creaked, the way they do in movies when something is about to happen. The two women lingered outside Susan's closet door, without opening it. Johnson, a former waitress who has been poking into the disorganized closets of the Bay Area over a 15-year career, seemed already to know what was on the other side of the door.

"It's really scary in there," said Susan at last.

Getting a hand

Johnson nodded. She is good at nodding. She took Susan's hand. Would it be all right to open the door and look inside? OK, said Susan. The knob was turned and the closet's contents immediately began pushing at the closed door, trying to get out. The first such thing turned out to be a vacuum cleaner. Other things trying to make a break for it were boxes of old clothes, cleaning supplies, papers and books. Susan shoved the door back closed.

"We can do the closet later," she said.

Later, for the disorganized, is the perfect time to get organized.

The two women entered the guest bedroom, where the 17 boxes were. Four boxes were on the bed, six were on a desk, five were smack in the middle of the floor and two boxes were blocking the door to the back porch. The rest of the room was awash with stuff on shelves, tables, bookcases and chairs.

Frozen in time

Once the room had been the bedroom of Susan's daughter, Genevieve, but she left home three years ago for college. The room remained frozen in time, like a woolly mammoth. Genevieve's high school stuff was still there, her middle school stuff was still there, her elementary stuff was still there. Living side by side were Beanie Babies, Shel Silverstein poetry books, ticket stubs to a 2006 Giants game, ticket stubs to a 2008 Batman movie, long-expired Muni transfers, heartthrob magazines, a brown stuffed bunny, a green stuffed bunny, the "Harry Potter" oeuvre, "Wizard of Oz" books, "Little House on the Prairie" books, one plastic pig and dried roses from the prom.

On a dusty shelf lay three souvenir snow globes, unshaken for eons, the fluid half evaporated. Inside the New York City snow globe, the water level was so low that the Statue of Liberty was doing little more than wading. In the closet were 97 of Genevieve's garments on 97 hangers.

All of these things needed to go. Over the next hour or so of professional organizing, none of them would.

'Staging area'

"What I need is a staging area," said Susan. "I need to prioritize. I could use the bedroom as a staging area to sort out the closet."

Johnson nodded some more.

"There's so much miscellaneous material," said Susan, gazing at it. She took some reams of paper out of one box and put them in the middle of the floor. Now the room was more miscellaneous than ever.

In a soft voice, Johnson said that was perfectly OK. Organizing is not about throwing things away. Throwing things away is attacking the symptom, not the cause. Anybody can throw things away.

"To keep or not to keep is a client's decision," she said. "I will help you clarify your criteria for what you choose to have in your life. The process is highly individualized."

The two women continued to gaze upon the vast collection of detritus, much as Hercules gazed upon the Augean stable. There was a difference, however, as Hercules eventually rolled up his sleeves.

"Is there anything we could do with these things right now?" said Johnson, in an even softer voice. She was almost pleading. "That empty box on the bed, perhaps?" One of the four boxes on the bed was indeed empty. Susan looked at it for some time. No, she said, the empty box should stay in the middle of the bed. She might soon need it, because the other boxes were already full. After an hour of discussing, inspecting and inventorying all the items, Susan said she really couldn't do anything about them right now. Instead, she would prioritize. She would start the prioritizing any day now. The first priority, she said, would be to ask her daughter to draw up a list of categories.

"She'll have to pick a category," Susan said, "and then we'll discuss that category and see what she wants to keep, within the category. But first we have to figure out the categories."

Johnson said that sounded like a splendid idea and, after 90 minutes, the organizing session came to an end. Total amount of stuff thrown away: none.

The two women agreed that Johnson would draw up an organizing plan in writing and the two of them would review it and conduct more sessions. The brown bunny and the green bunny stared down from the shelf and did not object.

Afterward, Johnson said that organizers frequently do nothing on the first visit but get the lay of the land and draw up a "custom organizing plan based on an in-depth needs assessment." The plan is sent to the client. Sometimes clients do something with the custom organizing plan, and sometimes, she said, the plan constitutes one more piece of writing to put into one more box.

Use it or lose it

Looking to unclutter your life? Some tips from professional organizers to help you let go:

-- Wear plastic gloves. When you pick up an item, the glove reduces your emotional attachment to it. You might actually throw the thing out.

-- Do small areas, bit by bit, rather than an entire room or an entire garage. Nobody ever cleaned a garage in one sitting.

-- Use a timer. Set the timer for 15 minutes, say, and when the timer rings, you're done organizing for the day.

-- Use the "keep/toss/don't know" system. Decide if each item is to be kept, tossed or set aside because you're not sure. After a week, look at the set-aside items. If you're still not sure, get rid of them.

-- If you haven't worn an item in a year, you never will. Somebody else needs it. Drop it in the donation box. You'll feel great.

-- Don't keep a musical instrument you don't play. Don't keep a bicycle you don't ride. Don't keep a love letter that could get you in trouble.

- Based on advice from the National Association of Professional Organizers

One man's trash

The junk drawer: Everybody has one, usually in the kitchen. It's the drawer where everything winds up that doesn't wind up someplace else. A professional organizer can tell a lot about a client by peeking in his junk drawer. This reporter removed his entire junk drawer from his kitchen and presented it for inspection to professional organizer Connie Johnson ( www.routine-matters.com), who offered this analysis:

Three screwdriver sets ("You might want to think about how many screwdrivers you really need")

Harmonica ("What's this doing in here?")

Super Glue ("One tube is OK but you have more than that")

Guitar pick ("Does this go here?")

Picture-hanging wire ("OK")

Street map of Los Angeles ("Put it in your glove compartment, but only if you're going to Los Angeles")